Second
GREENCYCLES MC-RTN Network Meeting Minutes
15th
- 18th February, 2006
Lisbon, Portugal
Host:
José M.C. Pereira, DEF, Instituto Superior de
Agronomia, Tapada da Ajuda 1349-017, Lisboa
Meeting
Venue: Vila Galé – Hotel Opera |
| Action
items |
|
| Andrew |
Help
Stephen to establish contact with the group in Bialystok |
| Andrew |
Identify
potential organisers for the GC supercomputing workshop |
| Anne/Andrew |
Clarify
the budget from which ES4 and ERCA are paid |
| Alcatel |
Organisation
of the remote sensing workshop in Sept/Oct 2006,
but without clash to ES4! JRC is interested in joining
the WS (contact via Sandy) |
| Maciek |
Inform
Andrew about the potential for a network meeting
in Poland, including the organisational details.
Barcelona will need to know by April. |
| Nicolas |
Inform
Andrew about the detail options for a supercomputing
WS that Corinne may know about |
| Sandy |
Contact
Andrew about the requirement of timesheets in the
financial reporting (to be clarified with PM) |
| Sönke |
Send
template for GC-website personal pages to all ESRs
and ERs, "update" links site |
| Stephen |
Send
details on data assimilation WS in Edinburgh to
CEA |
| Torben |
Send
parameters measured in Abisko to VAU, CEA, MetOffice
and UBRIS to inform modellers about potential model-data
comparison |
| Torben |
Organisation
of the GC methane workshop |
| All |
Give
feedback to Sandy on recruitment activity and potential
ways to improve the system |
| All |
Send
information relevant to local opportunities on science
communication to the greater public to Soenke for
the GC webpage. Likewise, any other communication
and outreach info (workshops, conferences, publications…)
|
| all
ERs and ESRs |
Update
CDP plans and send updated info on secondments to
Sönke and Andrew |
| Anne? |
Organise
a special issue of the ILEAPS newsletter and contributions
to SOLAS newsletter. |
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| Important
deadlines: |
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The
next report is due 45 days after new year: 14th Feb. 2007
Send activity report to CEA before the 22nd December 2006
Send Finance report to CEA before 31st of January 2007 |
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| Read
more on (click here
for printer friendly version): |
| Wednesday,
February 15th |
| Background
and Status |
| Science
Objective 1: Quantifying
feedbacks in the global carbon cycle |
| Science
Objective 2: Determine
the effect of land use on climate |
| Science
Objective 3: Improve
understanding of natural sources of CH4 and their responses
to human activities |
| Science
Objective 4: Quantifying
impacts of climate change and climate variability on fire-induced
emissions of greenhouse gases |
| |
| Thursday,
February 16th |
| Science
Objective 5: Quantify
impacts of climate change on terrestrial and oceanic biogenic
emissions of aerosols and chemically active gases and
their effects on tropospheric chemistry |
| Science
Objective 6: Quantify
impacts of vegetation and climate changes on atmospheric
dust and its feedbacks to CO2 and climate |
| Open
discussion on model
coupling |
| Open
discussion on methane |
| Open
discussion on fire |
| Open
discussion on remote
sensing and Alcatel's links to GC |
| Open
discussion on the
marine carbon cycle |
| Open
discussion on the
terrestrial carbon cycle |
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| Friday,
February 17th |
| Secondments |
| Next
Annual Meetings |
|
GREENCYCLES Workshops |
| Networking
issues |
| Group
photo |
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| Wednesday,
February 15th |
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Background
and Status |
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Jose:
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Introduction
to the logistics of the meeting |
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Andrew:
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Overview
of the administrative background of the network, introduction
of the individual partners, especially the non-contractual
collaborators. These are to be included into the science,
but this is not fixed in the contract (only mentioned
in Appendix A). It is possible to add other full partners,
as the project goes along, but the total budget cannot
be changed. Potential new partners could be invited
to meetings, but there is no obligation to do this.
Science objective: understand the role
of biological system in the global climate system and
the impact of human activities. Reduce uncertainty in
climate change prediction, by quantifying and reducing
the uncertainty in biogeochemical feedbacks of both
oceans and land. Themes: carbon dioxide, fire, landuse,
methane, dust, DMS and BVOCs. Thread themes together:
new developments in ESMs, improve realism of biological
feedbacks
Training objective: link ESRs and ERs,
industrial partnership, summerschools, Transfer of Knowlegde
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Discussion |
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Nicolas: |
asks
about the contribution of Alcatel, Dust and aerosols. |
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Sandy: |
secondments
need to better defined, no real clue about project will
develop when in the planning state – all of us now
have to define now, how these should best be organised
and timed to suit there needs! Should be as concrete as
possible, and effective -> need really to pay off. |
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Andrew: |
secondments
are required, but not forced |
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Allen: |
What
does Alcatel do? |
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Andrew: |
Not
yet specified. Reports on the telecom with Alcatel in
January. Alcatel don’t have data sets on their own,
but are keen on getting involved in downstream activities
from "their" satellites. For this they need
to understand the sciences their sensors are used for
to target future missions. Interested to look for needs
so that they can investigate possible solution. |
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Allen:
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working
with remote sensed data, little experience in processing
these data, could we learn about this? |
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Maciek: |
This
is his reason to go there, just for info seems a waste
of time |
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Andrew: |
Idea
is collaboration with industry, must be useful for project
in some way: There is no contractual obligation for a
definite period. |
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Sandy: |
need to discuss this here and now. Sandrine had been in
contact with Jose and Allen to discuss the first two projects
(Yannick and Allen). |
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Sandy:
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Recruitment
report:
Targets: 5 Experienced researchers,
12 Early stage researcher that should aim for a PhD,
but this is no formal obligation… Criteria for
selection are demonstrated scientific excellence, to
be the potential leaders in this field, background a
large diversity, origin from less-favoured-regions.
Status: 3 of 5 ER, 11 out of 12 ERS. All excellent,
equal gender, 8 of 14 scientists from lessfavoured regions.
The problem seems to be to keep the women in the business
(all ERs hired so far are male). Wide range of countries
of origin. Despite large intake of female ESR, still
unresolved problem of retaining women in science: related
to mobility, family, etc.. Perhaps need to look more
carefully of family status and its effects. Need key
data/info. Discuss with EC. There are deep psychological
reasons why families find it hard to move to other countries.
Explanation of the functioning of the recruitment board
3 position left to fill
• ESR II, MetOffice, half of the candidates already
interviewed, to start in April
• ER III, PIK, just started interviewing to start
later than March
• ER V, UBRIS just started selection procedure,
position to start in October.
To
get the best takes time, hence there has been a delay
for nearly all position (up to 6 months). Timing and
purpose of secondment need to rethink and reschedule,
as well as time budget for courses needs to be thought
about, as the scientists are now hired, to fit the schedules
for the ESRs and ERs. Advice on recruitment to the EU:
Time to achieve criteria demands more time than foreseen.
Suggestions to improve this? All to give feedback to
Sandy. |
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Science
Objective 1: Quantifying feedbacks in the global carbon
cycle |
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Title:
Terrestrial ecosystem processes modelling and global feedbacks
ER I: Sönke |
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Sergey: |
N stuff is very brave, what kind of validation data? |
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Sönke: |
Fluxnet,
N2O fluxes are rather local, 4 FACE experiments |
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Allan: |
constraints
by N on C uptake? Will be very different in N limited
systems such as in S. Africa. |
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Dorothee: |
Atmospheric
inputs? |
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Sönke: |
Will
use industrial inputs eventually, but not initially. |
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Allan: |
fire
in this project may be an important link to other groups |
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Title:
From physiology to PFT: Functional representation of N2
fixation in a Dynamic Green Ocean Model
ER II: Nicolas |
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No
CDP, because this is expected to change soon in response
to the recent research results. |
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Sergey: |
are
there major differences between terrestrial and ocean
nitrogen cycle? |
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Nicolas: |
not in principle, same processes involved. Can take evidence
from terrestrial sources to constrain marine processes |
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Dorothee: |
potential
reason for decoupling of P and N resulting from a lack
of iron? |
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Title:
Ecosystem processes in Mediterranean and mountain zones
ESR I: Raquel |
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Supervisor:
Andrew Friend, LSCE |
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Could
use shrub parameterisation from Sarah Shannon. |
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Stephen: |
most models perform badly in Mediterranean systems, hence
work on this useful to the community. |
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Allen: |
A
PhD student of Ben Smith has been working on Mediterranean
shrublands within the landscape version of LPJ.
Allen
suggests an IDL course in Apeldoorn, NL. |
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Title:
Hotspots, ER3 Alberte reports on this position:
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Tasks
of the ER3:
-
Identify key processes in key regions + ecosystematic
feedback
- Missing
processes in LPJ
- Possibility
of change in face of driving force
- Land-use
change
Key
regions are boreal forest, Amazonia rainforest, Sahel,
South Africa (aridification), India (population), China
(population)
The
ER is to work with offline models. First project is
Amazonia (in collaboration with the German TRACES project
(tropical Atlantic ecosystems).
Ideas
for the work: benchmarking from field, flux and satellite
data to improve many processes, e.g. phenology, respiration
and soil stocks, fire dynamics in connection for ENSO,
DOC export and river outgassing, nitrogen cycle, land-use
practises, shifting cultivation, problem of degrading
soil conditions under shifting cultivation.
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Sönke: |
Who
is going to do the nitrogen coupling in LPJ? (unclear) |
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Andrew: |
big
leaf model and plant physiology addressed by ER3? |
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Pierre: |
Long term dynamics: how do you test the model in the long-term.
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Stephen: |
there are drought experiments in tropics. You can see
mortality from induced drought. |
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Allen: |
Climate
data for Amazon? |
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Alberte: |
CRU,
but now in contact with Mahli in Univ. Edinburgh. Use,
but not enhance climate data to test site level model
performance. |
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Allen: |
CRU
is relaxing precipitation where no data available, Impairing
on the applicability of the data. |
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Title:
The Marine carbon cycle and air-sea fluxes of CO2 in the
North Atlantic,
ESR IV: Maciek |
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Supervisor:
Dorothee Bakker, Andrew Watson, UEA |
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Sönke: |
Problem
with process identification in ANN limits usefulness of
approach to inform modellers. |
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Dorothee: |
If
the ANN allows to construct temporal and spatial patterns
of pCO2 in top-layer is already a very important step. |
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Jose: |
Rule
methods can be used to constrain the neural network and
make the effect size of input data on output variability
clear. An example are regression trees to identify causal
mechanisms. |
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Dorothee: |
however, regression analysis do not identify the processes,
there is then the need for modelling as well. |
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Allen: |
Martin
has a student on neural networks in Jena, who will be
finishing relatively soon. |
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Title:
Global Atmospheric CO2 remote sensing data assimilation
system,
ER VI: Valentina
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Supervisor:
Martin Heimann
Day to day supervisor: Christian Rödenbeck.
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To
start beginning next week, details and CDP not yet discussed.
Does Martin has definite plans? Links to inversions? |
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Han: |
project very broad, try and convince Martin to get a more
precise idea what to do very quickly. |
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Title:
Ecosystem physiology and carbon/water dynamics,
ESR VIII: Trevor
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Supervisor:
Santi Sabate |
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Sandy |
Disappointed
that results of Niimets and Guenther are similar. |
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Trevor |
But
they are calibrated against the same data… have
plans to add processes for future simulation, e.g. CO2
increase. |
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Sandy |
interannual variability of Guenther is more pronounced
then Niiments? Correct? |
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Trevor:
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really
preliminary results. |
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Andrew: |
Proportion
of C uptake lost to BVOC? |
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Trevor: |
Varies
up to 100% on daily basis, but on the annual basis 2-3%
(for the unique experiment done, species dependent), locally
up to 10%. |
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Trevor |
globally
from Orchidee 1-2% |
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Andrew |
initial
idea of the ESR project more on carbon-hydrology interactions
in modelling, now more emissions – not sure how
appropriate the originally planned secondments will be? |
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Trevor |
BVOC
is only introduction to the model/modelling [only the
first year]. The focus will shift toward the original
plan after this phase. |
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Torben |
Other
GC projects have research on BVOC as well. ESRVIII should
be coordinated with research of the ESR at the MetOffice,
who will be working on BVOC. |
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Stephen |
Trevor's
work could be complementary since he is working more on
the processes, whereas MetOffice ESR is going to work
more on the climate effects. |
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?? |
Should
link to Bialystock group. Water interactions and link
to fieldwork? |
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